John Patrick Shanley is a guy I'd like to meet just so I can say "thank you." He wrote the wonderful and Oscar-winning screenplay for MOONSTRUCK (1987). He wrote and directed the wonderful hypochondriac's parable JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO (1990), which I like to refer to as "the greatest movie ever made." The commercial failure and highly mixed ( Read more... )

This is a film by Mike Nichols, with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, starring Tom Hanks, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Julia Roberts. If you missed it last year, that should tell you all you need to rent it immediately.

Or you could read the source book, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA ( Read more... )

It must be summer, because here come the big, dumb movies. This one is quite a bit better than you might expect. I found it to be a taut, smart, well-acted, and well-made thriller ( Read more... )

I had a chance to watch this again with some friends yesterday, and I just giggled my way audibly through the whole thing. This is one of the funniest movies of all time, and one of my all-time favorite films. Career best performances are given by John Goodman and Jeff Bridges, who just cracks me up even more based on how uptight his other roles ( Read more... )

I saw this film six days ago, on the last day before I reported to work at my new job. It tells the story of the writing of Truman Capote's true crime novel In Cold Blood. I have never read any of Capote's writings, despite my high-falutin' English degree, which I earned primarily by reading European writers. My only taste of his prose therefore ( Read more... )